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Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Distopia

The way I've always looked at it is, who can take more damage a guy in plate armor or a guy in robes? If you're wearing plate armor and a friend is in robes, would you not try and get attention off of your friend? I guess it's all in how you look at it...

i can see this but thats still how non trinity systems usually work.. guy with plate can take more hits and tries to get in the way to take some hits or control the fight.. in a trinity i find the aggro mechanic silly as you can watch mobs walk past a whole slew of easy pickins squishy players and b-line right to a taunting tank... then like kuppa said above i MUCH prefer seeing looking for "one" more than having to sit and wait for tank/healer specifically

Of course the waiting game can be frustrating, this is usually a symptom of having too few class choices IMO, this was never really a problem in a game like SWG with it's skill based profession system. However in games with class based progression, there needs to be a good amount of options, vanguard is a good example of it done right. AOC wasn't too bad either as each base class had a few options for loadout and combat style.

true how the classes are spread really has a huge impact.. with Rift it wasn't too bad because every class could take on multiple roles.. i just really dislike when I game pigeon holes you into a single role and you have no way to either spec out or have a dual role type build.

I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg

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No, I would like to see more games with an alternative to the holy trinity. I don't think GW2 combat model offered the best alternative. Most of the issues in GW2 were because 99% of mmos use the trinity and gamers had trouble with the learning curve and gamers are adverse to change. I like GW2 for many of its features. I would say the combat being what I liked the least.

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Originally posted by Aerowyn

true how the classes are spread really has a huge impact.. with Rift it wasn't too bad because every class could take on multiple roles.. i just really dislike when I game pigeon holes you into a single role and you have no way to either spec out or have a dual role type build.

Agreed, there's nothing that has me dropping a game faster than having limited options with classes.

For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson

It is a sign of a defeated man, to attack at ones character in the face of logic and reason- Me

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Originally posted by Homitu

I'm not yet convinced MMOs need the trinity, although after playing GW2 for several months, I certainly see the limitations of GW2's particular implementation of a combat system that attempts to deviate from the traditional trinity setup.

It's been pointed out before, but none of the commenters seem to get it,( and it's funny because they criticize game developers for not being able to think outside of the box), the holy trinity originally was not tank/heal/dps. It was Tank, Heal, crowd control (which is another form of damage mitigation).

When the term was invented the DPS was assumed... you needed DPS + the holy trinity (or rather, the holy trinity, plus 3 more fillers). You also wanted some other things like buffers, and snarers - but the trinity was the start of the group, and you filled in the remainder with the best that you could.

You can make it the four horsemen, or whatever, by just making more necessary combat mechanics and giving them to more classes.

Certain content in EQ required someone to snare monsters - so it adventure in that area, you needed a snarer, plus the "holy trinity". Or you could do outdoor areas where monsters were single pulled, and an enchanter was not required, so you could just tank and heal your way to experience. In the same area, you could also "quad kite" four monsters at once with snare effects, and more than one player could group up to do this.

The problem was that they didn't balance the content... the majority of the content, the dungeon content, which had the best expereince (until later expansions) and the best loot was indoor content, which required enchanters (crowd control) and someone to stand next to the mobs and smack them.

Had EQ not done this design - had the best experience and loot been in outdoor regions that was dominated by Druids, Mages and Necromancers - the "holy trinity" may never have come into popular use.

So one way to fix it, is to balance your content so that it requires a diverse combination of groups to beat.

Make a dungeon where unstunnable monsters come in pairs, so you need two tanks and crowd control doesn't work. Make outdoor areas where the monsters regenerate hit points so quickly that you need 3 DPS on them to kill them - and then put the best Tank and Healer loot on those mobs so that the tanks and healers will ask the DPS to help them, rather than the inverse.

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As to what a couple other people say about "roleplaying not being about playing roles". That's actually character playing. Combat based RPG's have always had roles, and they're fun. Emotes and gestures are nifty and all, but the cool mechanic of these games is playing a combat role, and doing it well.

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Originally posted by mikunimanNo, I would like to see more games with an alternative to the holy trinity. I don't think GW2 combat model offered the best alternative. Most of the issues in GW2 were because 99% of mmos use the trinity and gamers had trouble with the learning curve and gamers are adverse to change. I like GW2 for many of its features. I would say the combat being what I liked the least.

No offense, but this makes no sense. If WoW was your first MMORPG, no one would have liked it because they didn't have any experience with the combat mechanics. Their entire player base would have been 1 million people from EQ and DAOC (who wouldn't have liked those games).

People didn't like GW2 because its combat was a mess, and your actions didn't have any impact on the world. GW2's combat is sort of like Jazz. Some people really love it, but in the end mpst, people like more structured music (and all jazz fans are convinced that Jazz is the best music there is).

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the holy trinity promotes teamwork, something I feel is lacking in a big way on a large scale that MMO's need to really capture that MMO feel.

WAR, despite its flaws had a great large scale teamwork feel. If that game had 3 factions I would still be playing it today.

WoW Vanilla..... you were what you were, and thats all people expected you to be. You teamed up with people to actually get somewhere in raiding. Now you are everything, and unless you want raiding epics.. which are useless anywhere but raiding, and raiding is small scale anyway... everything in wow is small scale now....... *sigh*

I am done playing MMO's without a holy trinity. I want real consequences to my class choices, i want real consequences to my spec choices. I want real guilds again that rely on every member.

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The lack of the holy trinity is the main reason I logged off last night and do not plan on coming back...I enjoy playing a healer and really making that class click in whatever mmo I play...GW2 was fun for a while, but I miss my defined role.

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the holy trinity promotes teamwork, something I feel is lacking in a big way on a large scale that MMO's need to really capture that MMO feel.

WAR, despite its flaws had a great large scale teamwork feel. If that game had 3 factions I would still be playing it today.

WoW Vanilla..... you were what you were, and thats all people expected you to be. You teamed up with people to actually get somewhere in raiding. Now you are everything, and unless you want raiding epics.. which are useless anywhere but raiding, and raiding is small scale anyway... everything in wow is small scale now....... *sigh*

I am done playing MMO's without a holy trinity. I want real consequences to my class choices, i want real consequences to my spec choices. I want real guilds again that rely on every member.

to me non holy trinity promotes "more" teamwork depending how the combat is setup.. when you have set roles and everyone knows there role it turns into auto pilot mode and you basically just follow your role and it really doesn't change ever. With a bit more chaos thrown into the mix and everyone needing to play mutliple roles in a single encounter it not only encourages more teamwork it actually requires people to really know how to play in various roles to complete objectives. Just preference i suppose but after playing both i prefer the non set roles as it adds more variety to the encounters imho, especially when running the same dungeon multiple times.

I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg

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My problem with gw 2 is that it is not a good implementation of the no holy trinity idea. I think City of X did it way better and people were still able to have clear roles which is the main reason it fails in gw 2.

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Originally posted by kitaradMy problem with gw 2 is that it is not a good implementation of the no holy trinity idea. I think City of X did it way better and people were still able to have clear roles which is the main reason it fails in gw 2.

They must have changed from CoH, because CoH definitely copied the EQ, Tank, Heal, CC, DPS methodology.

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Been playing MMOs for years now and while I thought it sounded great on paper, I knew it was doomed to fail.

It basically failed on all the expectations I had:

I didn't really feel connected to my characters, they were all just DPS to me with some utility.

Dungeons were awful, unbalanced and a general mess. How were they ever going to balance it really? I still have nightmares about "hey i'm downed get me up!"

With the no trinity, I basically lost playstyles I love. I love tanking and healing, I felt relegated into DPS only. Sure, I could play a fully water specced elementalist but it was generally a waste of time.

The PvP basically became 'who can stay alive the longest' which I felt wasn't really tactical at all. It just discouraged you from playing squishy classes and specs overall. 3 guardians a warrior and a ranger became the normal in structured, of which you had a nightmare of a time getting them off flags.

Where was the teamwork? Take whatever and whoever into a dungeon, it didn't matter.

There's a couple of other minor things that made me dislike it a lot but yea those are the main ones.

So yeah, I hope no game tries that garbage again because I don't think it works at all in an MMO setting. It's like playing an FPS game where they've decided to give everyone the same gun, it's boring as hell.

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I find an all-hybrid system reduces the pride/feeling of accomplishment that I get from being really good at a particular role. I like defining myself and striving to be the best at that particular nitch, but while I do prefer having individual roles in a group setting, the classes themselves should be able to fill multiple roles based on gear,spec,etc. If a player's class can be specced for dps or healing then the developer needs to make sure that both/all roles are totally viable for that class and its up to the player to choose which he wants to pursue at any given time. This way the roles are there for you to swap between, but you need to put in the effort to gear for and learn how to play that role. Maybe "skill trees" could also be versatile enough to allow a hybrid spec for soloing.

In short, having defined group roles is good but each class needs the flexability to define itself as one of those roles depending on the players choice. Some classes may have two options while others may have three or more if you include hybrid specs.

What will eventually win the day is neither of the two poll options. It will be something wonderful and grand that you never imagined until Toyota entered the MMO business.

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Originally posted by grimfall

Originally posted by mikunimanNo, I would like to see more games with an alternative to the holy trinity. I don't think GW2 combat model offered the best alternative. Most of the issues in GW2 were because 99% of mmos use the trinity and gamers had trouble with the learning curve and gamers are adverse to change. I like GW2 for many of its features. I would say the combat being what I liked the least.

No offense, but this makes no sense. If WoW was your first MMORPG, no one would have liked it because they didn't have any experience with the combat mechanics. Their entire player basse would have been 1 million people from EQ and DAOC (who wouldn't have liked those games).

People didn't like GW2 because it's combat was a mess, and your actions didn't have any impact on the world. GW2's combat is sort of like Jazz. Some people really love it, but in the end mpst, people like more structured music (and all jazz fans are convinced that Jazz is the best music there is).

It doesn’t really matter then it matters now, when you have 10+ years of trinity mmos under a larger mmo player base and gamers generally brainwashed that that’s the only system that could possible work because it’s been done for so long and in so many mmos.

And as I mentioned GW2 did not do an alternative to holy trinity any justice. If I was to ask generally how many gamers that play mmos have experienced other alternatives to the holy trinity my guess the percentage would be low. That’s all I was getting at.

As a musician myself I get your jazz reference as GW2 combat model being all over the place. I would add that the people that “got it” had no issues with the way it worked. Whether they liked over another is a matter of opinion. Yeah, I would agree that when someone is brand loyal they do think it’s the best in the world.

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After GW2....I want a game that has world class realm vs realm warfare.....as my #1 desire.There are two games that offer that possibility...ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE...and THE REPOPULATION that I'm watching..

As for the trinity(not trio) of the three classes..or not.I'm for the freedom to specialize..or not.I'm for not being limited to a mainly cleric class or mainly mage class etc.That would be my preference.

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I prefer the old EQ system of Tank, Healer, Crowd control + DPS. The GW2 system doesn't feel anymore fun or challenging to me, chaotic yes, but not more fun.

GW2 reminds me a lot of the early days of EQ when we were still trying to figure out how to play our classes, manage agro and mana consumption and didn't have the optimal group makeup. It would take every ounce of concentration and quick thinking, kiting, ranger healing, fearing the mobs while everyone bandaged and eventually running back to finish off the mob before it could heal up again if you died. It was very intense and sometimes fun, but also very limiting because it was impossible to take on the more challenging content that was designed to challenge specialty classes.

I am glad GW2 went with the model they did so the anti-role community has more choices now, but I'll gladly stick to more structured combat.

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I prefer the defined roles myself. I was really looking forward to the idea of "No waiting for certain types of characters" to do a dungeon and the extreme homonogization of classes. However when I actually played with it... I was sorely disappointed.

I would like to see all classes have the option to perform all three roles. If you want to tank, well there's a way for your class to do it. Want to heal or DPS? Well you can do both as well. Design the classes to be able to do all three, but make the encounters require dedication for each role. Could easily be done IMHO by just swapping out skills. 5 random people all queue up for a dungeon, decide then who fills what role. Problem solved. If no one wants to fill a certain role, you have no one to blame but your group because everyone is capable of performing each role.

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To be as honest as i can: Holy Trinity was never good, never is and never will be, in my opinion. This is the thing i hated the most in MMORPG (next to the "gear treadmill").

However, is GW2's class system a good implementation of "non-trinity"? Well, while it have its flaws, it surely do its job. So, yes it can always be better, in GW2's case, but i will support every person who think that combat in MMORPG can be more diverse than standard "Tank\Healer\DPS" mechanic (which is a nice thing on paper, but it brings more bad stuff than good, in my opinion).

Bottom line: wanting "holy trio" back would be like wanting more of the same and i think its time for something different.